


A Blade

by littlerhymes



Category: Dí Rénjié | Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-25
Updated: 2010-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 02:26:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerhymes/pseuds/littlerhymes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jing'er was only a girl when she came to the palace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Blade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [proteinscollide](https://archiveofourown.org/users/proteinscollide/gifts).



Jing'er was only a girl when she came to the palace, small and slight with dark eyes that saw everything. At that time Wu was already emperor in all but name and she had long ago turned the tender parts of her heart to stone.

The girl was an orphan, raised by mountain monks. She came to the palace after bandits slew the monks, ransacked the temple, and left her the only survivor. According to rumour she had felled a few of those bandits herself. A hardened killer, they said, and not even thirteen years of age – why, Wu granted her an audience from curiosity alone.

She approached Wu as a supplicant, an orphan without name or wisdom or wealth to recommend her. But though her words were humble, begging for shelter and work, her eyes were defiant and even her bow to the empress seemed proud.

"Have you any skills, child?" Wu said, arching her brow. Her ladies tittered, as though this rough-hewn peasant could have anything to offer one who wielded the power behind the throne itself. "Tell me child, can you dance? Can you recite poetry, or embroider, or sing?"

"The mountain monks taught me to sit a horse and shoot a bow," Jing'er said. "I can hunt and skin a deer, and tan the hide too. Give me a knife and I can kill a man, if I must."

"And what good is that to me?" Wu said sweetly, and her ladies hid their laughs behind their fans. "Come closer, child. Let me see what we can make of you."

She inspected the girl. "You could be pretty," she said, the statement a fact, and turned the girl's head from this side to that. Her lacquered nails pressed lightly into that young, unmarked flesh and she marked the proud, steady light in the girl's eyes.

The empress thought, this one could be useful.

So Wu ignored the girl's ragged, bloodstained clothes, roughened hands and rude manners. Instead she informed her shocked attendants, "Jing'er shall be my handmaiden."

Jing'er was at first an uncouth addition to her court – clumsy and awkward, her accent constantly belying her humble origins – so the other women scolded her terribly and set her to the worst and lowest of tasks. However, she proved a quick study, and not only in the arts of pouring tea and playing pretty music. For the empress sent other teachers to the girl under the cover of darkness. These tutors, whose silence was bought in gold and threats, were masters of horse lore, martial arts, and black magic; Wu read their reports of her protege's exceptional talents and was pleased. Who would ever suspect this little, pretty girl of being the empress' own bodyguard?

By the time Jing'er was fifteen she was sleeping in the room next to the empress' own, all the better to watch over her mistress. At sixteen, she had eight kills to her name; the empress had many enemies.

In time it became common knowledge that she was Wu's favourite. Often empress and handmaiden would walk together in the gardens, Jing'er shading them both beneath an unfurled parasol while the less favoured handmaidens trailed three or four steps behind, trying to eavesdrop.

"Look at how they try to listen. But I know I can always trust you to keep my secrets, can't I?" Wu said, smiling serenely. "Just as I can keep yours."

Jing'er lowered her eyes to the ground, after years of service the very image of a proper maiden. "Yes, mistress."

Casually Wu reached out a hand and plucked a stem of fragrant jasmine. "I said you were pretty, the first time you came before me, do you recall?"

"Yes, mistress," murmured Jing'er again.

"You've grown up now," Wu said, still smiling. She let the jasmine fall. "You are beautiful."

She laid her hand on the girl's arm. Jing'er's robe was soft beneath her fingers, soft and pretty enough to conceal the steel that lay hidden underneath.

"Look at me," Wu said softly, and tipped the girl's face upwards. Jing'er's eyes were unreadable. Wu leant closer. The tilted parasol concealed them from view; they might merely have been whispering a secret; they might have kissed.

"Come to my chambers tonight," the empress said, and if her voice was a little breathless, if her heart beat too fast, she was still empress and none would remark on it. Oh, she thought, what a weapon she had wrought indeed.

Jing'er smiled. "Yes, mistress."


End file.
